What Is It?

The Wonderful Icon (TWI) is a small utility that sits in your system tray (windows notification area) and gives you access to numerous system commands, Windows manipulation/placement functions, hotkey options, sounds options, shutdown options and a user defined Start Menu. This is an amazing little application that has been around for a long time and never seems to have gotten the recognition it deserves.

Why Would You Want It?

If you want a simple, single click system tray icon that gives you access to all sorts of system commands using the mouse or hotkeys, combined with all sorts of user definable options then this is the one for you!

Don’t be put off by the lack of development in recent times and lack of a fancy GUI with icons – this is simplicity and functionality defined

It appears that The Wonderful Icon even works with Vista despite it the fact that it hasn’t been updated since Vista was released. N.B. I haven’t tested it on Vista, I am relying on comments posted elsewhere.

Why Do I Want It?

Because it gives me access to so many different functions in a system tray menu that I can define myself as well as defining items to be activated by Hotkeys. In fact I thing the most amazing thing about The Wonderful Icon is that it hasn’t been more widely recognised.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• System Tray Menu
• Hotkey Functions
• Select Sounds
• Access Common Tasks
• Access Common System Commands

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 15% [?]

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The Microsoft  Remote Shutdown Tool can also be used to shutdown or restart a local computer. Creating shortcuts to do this using the various options available enables different user defined alternative shutdown procedures to be defined. Also you can create a shortcut to STOP the shutdown process once started providing this is within the timeout period .

This is certainly not a new tip but a post today on one of my favorite blogs also showed how a GUI can be started, more of this at the bottom of this post. What I thought may be useful would be to give a overview of the available options and how to create the shortcuts to help less experienced readers.

This is a screenshot of three shortcuts I have created to shutdown, restart and stop the shutdown process.

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Popularity: 24% [?]

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What Does it Do – The Essentials?

Shutter is one of those tools that must have started life with the intention of being a fairly straightforward replacement for the Windows “Shut Down” dialog.

Of course I am speculating here but when you look at what the program now offers it shows all the signs of the developer (den4b) deciding “oh! that would be useful, I’ll add it in”.

Shutter allows the user to program Actions based on Events or to carry out the action immediately by pressing the “Now” button. The program can be set to run at startup and will reside in the system tray for access by left clicking with the mouse or a menu appears on right clicking.

The System tray Right Click Dialog Box

Summary:

• A useful piece of software that I use frequently (although I also use Brutus Shutdown Tools) .
• Very useful as part of a “Portable Suite” of programs to keep on a removable drive/USB stick/Portable Programs PC Partition.
• Easy to use at a basic level but also has many advanced Events and Actions

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware
• Portable

  
  

• Small Memory requirement
• Run from startup option
• Very Flexible

Cons: What’s Not So Good?

• Too many options?
• Over Complicated?

I have questioned both these Cons comments as it may be that the complexity of options and functions are a real benefit to some users.

Why Would You Want It?

1. Provides an alternative way to shutdown your system
2. Provides many more shutdown options
3. Provides events to trigger shutdown
4. Also provides actions that do not shutdown the computer

More About What it Does in Detail:

Events:

Allows for a series of different events to have happened to trigger a shutdown “Action” which in fact may not be a normal shutdown process

Actions:

Provides a series of shutdown actions and further actions that may be useful

Options:

The screenshots below are all self explanatory (click on the picture to open full size)

General Tab

On Action Tab

On Action Extra Tab

Web Interface Tab

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What is the My Free Review Experience?

I have used this program for several months on one of my laptops and it is part of my “Portable Applications” suite which I have installed on all my PCs and laptops as well as on a removable drive and USB stick. It gets used at least once and sometimes more each day but only to shutdown or restart the laptop. Usually this is done using the now button but occasionally it has been useful to set the timer to allow running tasks to complete before the shutdown.Used in this way I have found it to be simple and efficient to use and have not experienced problems with crashes or hangs when using it. All in all it appears to be a useful part of my program toolbox.

What Could Make it be Better?

• As den4b is currently working on the next version let’s wait and see this before commenting

den4b Quotes on his website about progress on Shutter V3:

January 30 2008

……….On the other hand, considerable time was spent for re-designing and re-working Shutter. Bits and pieces are coming together now, and hopefully I’ll have a release candidate soon ready for testing. If anyone wants to have a pre-release look at it – you can contact me for more details. The underneath structure has pretty much stabilised now, but looks and feels of things do require some user attention.

What Other Posts are Relevant?

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

What are the Tags?

Technorati Tags: Freeware, My Free Review, Portable Freeware, Portable Freeware Applications, Programs, Reviews, shutdown tools, software, Utilities, Windows, Windows XP

Popularity: 17% [?]

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